David
Rockefeller: Memoirs

Despite the famous surname, David Rockefeller
is an almost obscure figure. Unlike his late
brother Nelson, the youngest of John D.
Rockefeller Jr's five sons never courted the
public's favor or campaigned for political
office. Indeed, he seems almost phobic about
publicity. He was president of Chase Manhattan
Bank, chairman of Rockefeller University, and
like his father and grandfather before him, is
noted for his philanthropy. But type his name
into an internet search engine, and it's clear a
lot of people think David is unduly modest about
his activities. To them, Rockefeller is as
ominous a figure as Satan. Dubbed "the secret
ruler of the world" by more than one conspiracy
buff, Rockefeller is often cast as a master
puppeteer whose strings are attached to
presidents, prime ministers, the media, and the
world economy. And he pulls those strings with a
clique of equally powerful elitists from behind
the impenetrable walls of the Council On Foreign
Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the
Bilderberg Group.

Pity, none of this is given much attention in
Memoirs, a heaping 496 pages of tame prose
highlighted by an account of Rockefeller's early
years. As the youngest of the brood, David, born
in 1915, was shunned by his older siblings,
including Nelson who was as handsome, charismatic
and boisterous as David was pudgy, shy and
retiring. When dealing with his often lonely
childhood, Rockefeller writes with a disarming
modesty that easily wins over the reader. Like
his father who suffered from an often paralyzing
shyness, David had to work hard to build the
confidence that would make his adult life so
eventful. Rockefeller writes about that adult
life with the same modesty, but it's here that he
may lose the sympathy of most readers.

David admits that he never earned an A in
college, but he did manage an A- in entomology.
Yes, conspiracy buffs, the study of insects. And
there is evidence that Rockefeller sees little
difference between bugs and the great unwashed
who populate the human race. As he said in 1973,
"Whatever the price of the Chinese revolution, it
has obviously succeeded not only in producing
more efficient and dedicated administration, but
also in fostering high morale and community of
purpose."

His words of praise for the revolution in which
some 10,000,000 people were murdered, didn't make
it into his book, but when explaining his and
Chase Manhattan's friendly dealings with every
dictator from Pinochet and Saddam Hussein to
Romania's Nicholae Ceausescu, he says, "Even
though I was totally unsympathetic to these
regimes, I believed the bank should work with
them." And work with them he did, very
profitably so.

Rockefeller's apparent indifference to human
suffering really came to the world's attention in
1979. The Iranian hostage crisis of that year
might never have happened if David had not
escorted the deposed Shah of Iran to safety in
the U.S., thereby enraging the Ayatollah and his
cutthroat supporters. Like his grandfather, who
said "Let the world wag" after muckraking
journalist Ida Tarbell exposed his empire for the
monopoly it was, David doesn't apologize for his
role in that disaster.

Readers of his Memoirs who are not fascinated by
banking may expect an apology for much of this
book. Page after tedious page is devoted to the
subject, and much of the tedium results from
Rockefeller's personality. Like the villain in a
James Bond movie, Rockefeller is always charming,
never once losing his temper. When describing a
confrontation with a rival at Chase, David
writes, "If the disagreement was strong enough,
we could end up pretty close to the borderline of
incivility."

Most interesting, apart from the account of his
early years, may be the description of the power
struggles within the family itself. For much of
his life, Nelson was the unofficial head of the
dynasty, but his wiliness to put personal
interests above those of the family led to his
being ousted by, who else?, David. By then, David
had long since stopped idolizing his big brother
who would die in 1979 while in the arms of a
woman other than his wife (another aspect of
Nelson's life of which David did not
approve).

Of course, throughout the life recounted in
Memoirs, we see David Rockefeller putting his own
and his family's personal interests above those
of his country and the world in general. Blood
is thicker all right, even thicker than
Rockefeller's mediocre book.